The Constellation Jane
by jetplanejane
Summary: She'll never be his goddess, but Loki has another way of immortalizing Jane Foster. Lokane oneshot, written for the Lokane holiday fanwork exchange over on tumblr.


"Do you see that constellation, the one that looks like an eagle?"

Jane was more aware of Loki's proximity; the intimacy of the tall, timeless solidity of his frame at her back. They stood together on one of the palace balconies, the eternal city-realm of Asgard before them and the nebula-misted sky overhead. "Maybe."

He slid his hand over her hip and angled her body toward the elusive configuration of stars while his right arm directed her line of sight. Loki dipped his lips to her ear. "And now?"

His breath was like a breeze that preceded a Puente Antiguo thunderstorm: warm, sultry, heavy with the promise of rain and wet earth, if only for a night. Loki's hand stayed where it was, but Jane tried not to read anything into that. He was, after all, merely satisfying her curiosity about the Asgardian night sky after Thor had confessed his ignorance on the subject.

"I see it now." There were ten stars, hung like twinkling Christmas ornaments in pockets of luminous gas and dust.

"That's Hresvelgr. A Jotun, like me." He chuckled (self-deprecatingly, she thought). "In eagle form. Your ancestors believed that he sat at the end of the world and caused the wind to blow when he beat his wings in flight." She heard him smile above her head. "Idiotic superstition, typical of Midgardians. They're just stars. Would you like to hold them?"

"Yeah, sure. Right." _As if._ In the grand Asgardian scheme of things it might seem like Jane was born yesterday, but she wasn't gullible.

"You don't believe me? Give me your hand."

With a sigh, biting the inside of her cheek to steel herself from smirking, Jane decided to humor Loki. Whatever demonstration he had planned, she was determined not to be fooled into thinking it was more than an elaborate trick.

Loki reached out to the sky and closed his hand steadily around Hresvelgr. Stellar warmth leaked from between his fingers as he deposited the stars in her cupped palm: a sprinkling of firefly lights and glittering dust: Alcyonic blues, Arcturusian yellows and Betelgusian reds – old, bloated supergiants waiting to die glorious deaths.

"Oh. My. G-d." The combined opaline light of the stars dappled Jane's face.

The prince smiled off her grin, clearly pleased with her reaction (and himself). "Careful. The blue ones'll burn your hand."

Some were as heavy as marble shooters, others as light as peppercorns – little gravity wells nestled along the linear crease-lines of her hand.

"Ow!" A bright new Class O star stung her skin with its actinic heat and Jane flinched, instinctively, spilling the engines of light out over the balcony where they floated away like fallen embers on the air.

"I did warn you," Loki chided, taking her hand in his and smoothing the cool pad of his thumb over her beta-burned skin.

Trying to ignore the Aesir's seductive touch, Jane returned her gaze to the horizon, fully expecting to locate Hresvelgr where she'd seen it earlier. But the constellation was missing from the sky. Where once there had been the vague outline of a mythological eagle, there was only the nebula that had cradled it. "That's not possible. How did you...?" She turned to him.

Mischief pulled the conceited line of his mouth into a smile. "Magic."

"No, really, how did you do that?"

But he wouldn't say, except to ask, "Would you like to try? Anyone could do it." He gave her a thorough, almost disdainful once-over. "Even you."

_Gee,_ thought Jane, _thanks._

Taking his hand from her hip, Loki thread his long fingers through hers and lifted their interlaced hands to the heavens. There they closed around a kite-like string of faint Chinese-lantern lights. They were lukewarm and lacked significant mass: stellar remnants that had burned themselves almost to ash. He allowed her time to examine them before placing them back in the sky before Loki nudged the positions of the stars, changing the architecture of the constellation into something new entirely. "There, for posterity."

Jane frowned, tilting her head as if it would make the join-the-dots outline more easily discernable. "What's it supposed to be?"

He laughed. "Is my star-arranging skill so poor? It's you."

"Oh, please, give me a break."

"A break? Are you tired?"

"No, it's an..." _Expression,_ Jane started to say, then dismissed it, waving her hand at the sky. "That's not me." _Is it?_ She tried to move them the way Loki had demonstrated earlier, but her fingers made contact only with empty air. "It's a clever trick, I'll give you that."

"What is this obsession with tricks?" Loki asked, genuinely curious about her resistance to his sincerity. "Your beauty is no illusion, Jane."

_Okaaay._ She looked away, hoping he wouldn't see the big stupid grin tearing up the blush that had spread across her face. "That's very flattering, but, um, I don't really need myself immortalized in the stars or anything."

"I didn't do it for you. Or Thor." It was Loki's turn to avert his gaze as he fussed with the cuffs of his sleeves, tugging the creases out of the fabric. "How's your hand?"

"It's, uh..." Jane glanced at her palm, where she'd held a piece of the universe. It was probably the closest she'd ever come to feeling like a god. "Fine."

"Good." He pushed up from the balustrade he'd been leaning against and offered her his hand. "Would you like to learn how Bifrost works?"

"The bridge? Really? Isn't it kind of late?"

"Oh, Heimdall never sleeps. I'm sure he won't mind a midnight visit. As long as you let _me_ do all the talking."

That wasn't likely to happen, and they both knew it, but she slipped her hand in his and allowed him to lead her from the balcony.

Overhead the constellation Jane glittered high above Asgard's horizon.


End file.
